Moved, mostly

I hate moving, more than just about anything I have to do. I think it goes back to my childhood, when, courtesy of the US Army, I was moved 5 times from the time I was born until I was 3 years old. Until I was 25, the longest I lived in one place was 5½ years. To the best of my recollection, all of the army moves were done by professionals, right down to the packing, and several pieces of my furniture bear multiple identification stickers from those moves. I hate packing, and I kind of don't really like unpacking, but I do a little better at the unpacking than at the packing. Saturday, courtesy of some of the most awesome friends, and my 2 youngest nephews, all of the furniture, and 97% of the boxes got moved. Most of what was left is hanging clothes, and miscellaneous stuff, only about half to ¾ of which will get moved, the rest is just plain crapola, and will go in the garbage.
The cats have done very well, especially Trinity & Tegan, who were born in the house we just moved out of. I think the best part for them is that they don't get locked up in the bedroom at night, so if they want to go out on a perimeter inspection in the night, they can, at least as much of the perimeter as the walls will allow. There's only been one accident, and it was on the linoleum floor, so easy enough to clean up. They are still very much sleep with Mom cats, at least 3 of them are. Mollie, however, has decided to proclaim her independence, and she's not going to sleep in the bedroom unless it pleases her to do so, thankyouverymuch, a point she made last night by staying out in the living room on the ottoman.
We have less space overall than we had access to in the old place, but their confinement has gone from about 120sqft (our bedroom, which is where they HAD to spend their nights, and where they remained confined anytime I was gone overnight) to 790sqft, although part of that is closed off until I can get to sorting all those boxes and such. We now live in a 2 bedroom duplex with NO DOGS in our space. The bedrooms are a little bigger than the one we had, and they are also more square, while the previous one was Longer than it was wide. I chose the larger (by about a foot's width) of the 2 rooms simply because it IS larger, but I discovered on Saturday night that I chose even MORE wisely because the window in that room faces the back of the property, which is essentially an open field, whereas the other bedroom's window faces the parking lot on that end of the building (I am in the downstairs unit of a 2 story building), and while the security light is AWESOME to have lighting the parking lot, it also lights up that bedroom pretty well too.
I am quite pleased with the fact that I have finally pared down (9 years after Mom died) everything I own to that which I will actually USE, or I truly LOVE. Now if I can just find those organizational faeries to come get everything unpacked and organized, it will be fabulous! I am not pushing myself to get it all done at once. Last night I picked up a load of stuff (mostly clothes and my small garbage cans) from the old place on my way home from work. My goal for last night was to get the kitchen cleaned up (dirty dishes from the chili I cooked on Saturday to feed my moving crew, plus what hadn't gotten washed on Sunday & Monday), unload at least 1 moving container in the kitchen, and get all the clothes sorted. I managed to accomplish that PLUS clean out a drawer in my dresser that was holding random stuff instead of the clothes it could/should have! I also got the window security locks installed on all the windows except the one I can't get to in the spare bedroom (aka storage bedroom) because of all the boxes. Tonite I have several loads of laundry to get done (thank heavens for the inexpensive Laundromat a mile from home with 25-cent washers & reasonably priced dryers AND free wi-fi (since my home internet is STILL not working, tyvm AT&T for telling me lie after lie throughout the process of getting moved. If you'd been honest in the first place, I would already have everything I need & not be hatin' on you today) that I can use to get my internet fix, and get caught up on some of my FB apps that have suffered the last 5 days since I unplugged on Friday before the move… I figure that by the time I finish the laundry, I'll be ready to get home, hang what needs to dry in the bathroom, put the rest away, and empty another tote in the kitchen before I am ready for bed. At this rate, the kitchen will be put together by the weekend, but not a whole lot else. I just HAVE to finish it before Scarby starts, though I'd like to be able to say it's finished before NTIF, which still gives me 4 weeks to get it all done (aside from the monster in the spare bedroom, which will be reasonably done by the beginning of Scarby, if for no other reason than I'll need to be able to get all my garb organized & easy to choose from & pack for each weekend).

Update & stuff

Last week, I was without internet access at home, which, in all honesty, had me a little VERY freaked out. The only reason my sanity was intact (well, as intact as it ever is these days) is that I could at least text and check Facebook & email from my phone, thanks to my pastor's generosity and willingness to lend me the $ to get a metro PCS phone. I didn't do much posting or answering email, simply because the phone is a no-frills, basic model, without a QWERTY keyboard, and it's just too much work to try to email or post much of anything using a phone keypad.

Yep, my phone is only marginally bigger than my iPod.

As it turns out, a mouse had chewed the wire along the wall for the DSL line. Damned mouse! Apparently caged cats are no mouse control whatsoever… hmm. A friend said to me "Kitties are not doing their jobs." I pointed out to him that there are only 2 cats in the whole house that think they have a job other than breeding or looking precious, and those two stay locked up in my bedroom, which is NOT where the DSL line is located.
Today, as I was cleaning the kitchen, I moved the toaster and found, what we can hope was the offending mouse.  S/He was fried and toasted, having chewed the toaster cord in at least 2 places.  Serves the little bastard right! Not only did it cost us DSL, but we are out a toaster now too! But we do have more kitchen counter space...

I did manage to get a few things handled last week, using the computers at the Workforce Center and Public Library. I've applied to Weatherford College, to enroll in an Associates of Business Administration program. It will get me some more accounting, HR and Payroll experience, and hopefully, make me more marketable than my Bachelor of Arts in History/English has. The Workforce Investment Act should cover the costs of school, supplies, and fees. I have an appointment with the HHS office for some public assistance, after spending an hour standing in line, having filled out my application manually (since they chose to ignore my online application for some reason).

I finally (I hope) broke the shortcat of her penchant for peeing on the bed. Granted I am living with a small, covered litterbox on an endtable at the foot of the bed, and a folded over plastic tablecloth along the foot of the bed, just in case, but I no longer have a huge cat crate taking up half my meager floor space, and I don't have to wash linens every day.

Today I managed to get my bodhran moved to where I've wanted to put it since I moved into this room, and put a bamboo shade on the west window. That window's shaded partially by a tree, but since we hit our 10^th day in a row of 100*+ temperatures, the partial shade is NOT keeping much of the heat out. The shade isn't a perfect fit, there are a couple of inches on either side exposed, but for the most part, my window's covered, I've got more privacy than the sarong that was hanging up there before afforded me, and my room stayed much cooler today, with the a/c unit on low and on a more mid-range temp than the colder one I use when I'm in here at night. Tomorrow I am going to locate a hammer and get a couple of other things hung up and get the room into a little better shape so it doesn't make me want to scream when I'm in here for very long other than to sleep.

And now, if you'll excuse me, the shortcat is demanding her turn on the computer…

Starting to settle in

Yeah, I’ve been gone for several days, and I have a (few) reason(s) for that. The main reason has been, THE MOVE. I HATE ABHOR moving. One would think that after all the moves I’ve made, just as an adult (10, excluding going into & back home from dorms in college), I would have this down to a science, right? Never mind the fact that by the time I graduated from high school I had moved 9 times already. Yeah, notsomuch. I am a packrat. I save EVERYDAMNTHING, just in case it might 1. Be important someday, or 2. Be valuable someday. I come by this quite honestly, because my mother did it (and she openly admitted to doing so), and so did my grandmother (though she denied it vehemently). Edie (my grandmother), unlike her daughter & granddaughter, however, was relatively organized about it, and most of what she kept was paperwork. Over the years, we have gotten rid of tax returns and bank statements that were as old as my mother was. I have NO CLUE why Edie felt she had to save those things, they didn’t mean anything to anyone except her, and after 5 years, she really didn’t need to worry about having to provide them to anyone. Mom, on the other hand, bless her heart, had good intentions of being organized with her paperwork, but it just never happened. Her desk was virtually always chaotic, regardless of how many organizers and sorters she had. I suppose that technically there was some organization, which was only understood by her, because usually she could put her hands almost immediately on whatever it was that she was after. Where my paperwork is concerned, I am much the same way, I tend to have piles here and there on my desk, and while most people can’t see any method to the madness 99% of the time I could put my hands on the requested item quickly. Mom’s problem, however, went beyond paperwork to dolls (which, granted, the collection was started for me), cat figurines, angels, Christmas stuff, books, and miscellaneous other tchotchkes. In the 7 years since she died, there have been multiple purges of her stuff. The first was in the weeks after she died, trying to make some sense of her ‘study’. The second came about a year later, when we were getting ready for the estate sale, and to put the house on the market. That one was pretty big, and a whole crew of folks (mostly friends of my sister & b-i-l) came over to help get junk out and CLEAN. The following January came the 3rd, when the house had been sold, and I was moving into a tiny apartment, and small storage building. A little over a year later came the 4th, when I moved from that apartment into a small house with it’s own storage building. The 5th came last spring, when I moved into the house I’m moving out of now. Mission Arlington came and picked up about a half a roomful of miscellaneous stuff, and I tossed even more. Now that I’m moving from a house to essentially a bedroom, it was time for a MAJOR purge. Last weekend my sister & b-i-l came over and we emptied the shed… filled 2 big rolling garbage cans with misc. paper crapola and other stuff that was not worth trying to sell because of damage, or worthless, or whatever. On Tuesday afternoon, Charter rang my doorbell. Now, I’d been up to the Charter office and talked to them the week before, told them I was moving and that my contract needed to be cancelled effective on Wednesday, and that I wasn’t transferring because I was moving to someone else’s house and I wasn’t allowed to have Charter (true), and that I would bring my digital box & remote by on Wednesday afternoon. They said that was fine. The guy at the door said I needed to either pay him the entire bill, or turn in my equipment. WTF? I told him that the service was supposed to be cancelled the next day, and he told me that regardless of what the agreement I had with the office was, I needed to hand over the equipment & he was disconnecting the service unless I forked over the $. (He was in the Charter truck, uniform, and had paperwork, so I feel certain he was on the up&up. I’ve got my receipt, just in case, showing that I turned in the equipment). That’s another part of the reason I’ve not been around, my service got shut off a day early. (BASTARDS)
Wednesday morning we loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly Weatherford (on a hill, actually). That move entailed my bed and most of the bedroom furniture, along with clothes and a handful of boxes. I did manage to get everything put away, except the clothes that are in totes and the big suitcase in the closet still, but I have enough out to get my through a couple of weeks if necessary. On Friday I went back over and had another friend helping me get some of the kitchen stuff sorted into sell or store, packing up some of the Snowbabies, and emptying the freezer before the fridge move the next day. (By the way, a Snowbaby has gone MIA, and I’m not happy about it. I realized today, however that perhaps it’s Karma or something, as it was called I Have Lots to Give, which I have always been able to say, but now, I really can’t. There was an initial idea that we could, for the time being, do a whole ghetto internet hookup, and run the wire down part of the stairs from the modem, and across the ceiling in the hall, then drop it down into my room. Yeah, that didn’t work out because the modem is not a router too, it is ONLY a modem, and her desktop doesn’t have a second ethernet connection. Now, I was welcome to use her computer (which is in her bedroom) if one of them wasn’t on it, or in the bedroom for something that they needed/wanted privacy for. A fine and generous offer. The biggest problems there are 1. I intrude on their space, and 2. My ass is just about 2 inches too wide for that chair to be comfortable. Yesterday we went and did more sorting, dumped about 4 bags of misc crapola trash, and boxed up about 10 boxes to come over here. Those need to be unpacked over the next couple of days until I’m planning to go back to the house on Wednesday to do some more fine sorting and pick up a another load. The estate sale is being put off until the 19th, 20th & 21st, because I just physically can’t have everything ready before then. My goal is to have the sorting and packing DONE by Thursday, so that on Saturday, we can arrange the sale stuff and get to pricing things. In other news, I DO have a trip planned, to Galveston, the first weekend in December for Dickens on the Strand. This will be my 3rd trip, and I’m excited to see the differences from immediately post-Ike last year to the state of recovery now. My Rogues will be performing, and with all the awful I’ve been dealing with lately, I’m so very glad to have something to look forward to! I’m staying home with animal-sitting duty for Thanksgiving, and that will be fine, because, well, did I mention the bagpipes at Dickens?? I think that’s about it for tonite, my drugs have kicked in and this is about to become a redonkulously silly & non-sensical post!

Harry Potter & more

It's been 8.5 weeks that I've been unemployed. It sucks, big time, but I continue to soldier on. In an effort to conserve funds, I'm trying very hard not to go anywhere that I don't absolutely HAVE to go. My job search has been a daily task, searching Monster, CareerBuilder, Constructionjobs, HotJobs, WorkInTexas, and any other job board I can find that has listings in my area. I've had one interview, but never heard anything back from them, despite the fact that I have left a message and sent an email to follow up. I think that's the MOST frustrating thing, not getting any feedback. I have submitted between 3 and 10 resumes EVERY WEEK, and I've gotten 1 stupid interview. It's not as if I'm not well qualified for the positions I'm applying for. Granted, the one for which I interviewed, I suspect they really wanted someone with more specific contract administration experience. I am registered for a 3 day seminar week after next through TWC, perhaps that will help me figure out what I'm not doing as well as I could.

Tuesday afternoon I was utterly & completely tired of being in my house. The thought did cross my mind to head out to one of the dozens of midnight showings of Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince, but then I remembered how crazy crowds make me, and I decided that I would give it a couple of days and let the initial furor that seems to always accompany the releases. Yesterday wasn't terribly bad, NCIS had an all day marathon, so there was at least something that kept me entertained while I was puttering around the house and checking job boards. I made a small grocery run to pick up a few things so I could have a decent meal last night and tonite, and I decided that I would try to hit one of the matinees today, in the hopes that since it is a weekday, and the theater had it on 8 screens, I might manage to see it without 500 other people packed into the theatre like sardines. SCORE! I got there technically in time for the very next showing, but as it was 5 minutes to showtime and I wanted a little popcorn, a drink, and a trip to the ladies room before I settled in for 2.5 hours, I elected to get a ticket for the following show. That showing was in one of the smaller theatres, but I don't think I missed anything seeing it on a smaller screen. There were 2 people already in the theatre when I got there, and after that a grand total of 5 more adults and a 6 year old came in as well. I was a bit concerned about the child, but she did very well, only talking a couple of times, and one of those was during the previews. What an awesome movie! I'm really thinking I need to re-read the books, and actually, watch the rest of the movies again. *a little side note, last weekend I watched the marathon on whatever channel it was, of several of the other movies. Call me stupid a dork, but it wasn't until Harry's first transport by Flue Powder, when instead of Diagon Alley, he said Diagonally that I caught the play on words! ::headdesk:: Obviously even when I read the books I didn't catch it, but I am going to blame that on the fact that before I read any of the books, I saw HP & The Prisoner of Azkaban, which hooked me, and I borrowed all of my #1 Boy's books and brought them home with me to read. I devoured them so quickly that I just must have skimmed over a lot of stuff! I don't know what it is about Snape, but as long as Alan Rickman is in that costume, he makes the girlybits quite happy! I'm not sure what it says about me that I get all hot and bothered by an evil one, and I've not seen him in anything else that makes me wanna just knock him over and have my wicked way with him, but whooeeeee! Maybe it's the hair… I LOVES me some long hair. Not that Jason Isaacs ever did it for me, even with all that hair as Lucious Malfoy, but then he was purely evil, and there was something just, umm, FREAKY about that bleached out white hair.

My little outside kitties are doing well. The kittens will come and eat if I'm sitting on the step, and they'll come up on the patio when I'm sitting out there. Mind you, they don't get within touching distance on the patio, but they don't run and hide where I can't see them. They will go under the deck, where they can see me, and I can see them, and I'm ok with that. This weekend I'm going to get my friend's trap and try to get mama trapped so I can have her spayed before she gets knocked up again! I have determined that the little creamy one with the points is a girl, and the little grey one is a boy. The tuxedo I can't tell for sure, but I'm leaning toward boy.

I think that's about it for tonite. I need to get better about this blogging thing, and perhaps with a little more work, I can manage that. I should really be doing more organizing of the stuff at my house. I think tomorrow I'm tackling the media room and getting stuff re-sorted so that when I get the storage room cleaned out I can put stuff that goes in there away.

Clearing

I really need to learn to have more down time! And when I say down time, I mean time when I’ve turned off the tv, and frankly, probably the laptop, which, incidentally has recently been named Wendell. Don’t ask me why his name is Wendell, it just is. One of those things, I guess. I suppose it would probably be fine to have Wendell on, for things like journaling, but I need to really focus on not hiding behind the forums, myspace, facebook, and other random sites that seem to fascinate me and monopolize my time and energy. . I’ve been conditioned to ALWAYS have noise. When I was a kid, I always had the radio on or the tv going while I did my homework. I simply can’t concentrate when it’s quiet. Of course, I was a fairly unremarkable student, which might not have been the case, had I been a little better able to focus on my studies. I can’t sleep when it’s quiet. I have the tv on for awhile until the timer turns it off, and the Ipod is already running though I can’t hear it over the tv. I have list after list of things that I need to get done, yet I allow myself to get sucked into the internet, or a video game, or the tv, probably largely as a means of avoiding what really needs to be done. That being said, my goal for the next couple of weeks until my House Concert on February 5th, is to get what is supposed to be a study/sewing room/garb closet but is currently piled, literally, with junk, cleared out and organized. Tomorrow, when I get home from work, I am going to start pulling stuff out and stacking it in the living room so it can be sorted into categories: 1. Keep and display or have where I can use it easily 2. Keep and store in a proper and organized manner 3. Keep and photograph to post on Craig’s List or Ebay 4. Donate to Mission Arlington because while I don’t need or want it, it’s still usable, but not worth the trouble of Ebay or Craig’s List 5. TRASH I don’t get enough sleep most nights, and I am not entirely sure that part of the problem is not all the clutter and junk in my house. I need to clear the clutter and perhaps my brain will be a little clearer, so I can focus on things that I want to work on. It’s time for Wendell to go to sleep, and me too, actually, so I’m off to watch a little more Cosby til I fall asleep with the cats.